snatchie: "I think we banned badly versus EnVyUs"

AGO started the European Minor with a confident win over GODSENT, defeating the Swedes 16-8 on Cache, but couldn't repeat the same level of play against Envy, who took a 16-7 win on Inferno.

snatchie thinks that GruBy and Furlan are playing better in AGO than in former teams

We talked with Michał "⁠snatchie⁠" Rudzki after the match against the Frenchmen, and with some translation help from the team's manager Jaroslaw "tgrs" Smietana, heard about the key rounds in both games.

Let's just start with you as a team coming here, you qualified for the event and then had some good online results after the qualification. How did you feel coming into the Minor?

I think that we know that we have the easier group of the two, we won versus GODSENT in the last match of the Minor qualifier and we knew that Windigo would be the outsiders of this group, but we can't underestimate them. From the beginning, we knew that EnVyUs were the favorites to advance from the group, in the first place I think, and the second place would be a battle of our team and GODSENT, most probably. And it will happen probably, I think that GODSENT will win versus Windigo.

You knew you were going to play GODSENT in the first match, did you prepare for them particularly, how did you think that match would go?

Our coach analyzed some demos of them, we knew that their basic is that they have very good individual players, but they don't have a lot of complicated tactics.

On the T side, there were a lot of post-plant situations and you ended up winning the first half 9-6. Were you happy with that result and how the T side went?

We were happy, but a little bit upset also, because we lost a 1v2 versus znajder where we had good positions with me and TOAO but we did some stupid things that znajder capitalized on.

After the switch, on CT it seemed pretty comfortable, did everything go as planned?

We won the pistol round which was the most important round for us, in my opinion. They had full eco and then they played a full buy round, which we also won because of Furlan's 3k on A. They pushed doors, Furlan had a UMP and just killed them. After the first gun round, they had low economy so we just used it and closed out the game.

Following that pretty confident win, you go into EnVyUs but it didn't start off really well for you. Tell me a bit about the first half on Inferno and the struggle on the CT side...

Firstly, I think we banned badly versus EnVy, they have a strong Inferno, I think that their style is really good. They have good flashes which always make you full blind, you can't do anything, and even in practice, we didn't meet with this style of game on Inferno, with stuff that EnVy did. So it was hard for us to find our game and I think that our CT result wasn't so bad as it looked, we had some unlucky rounds which we didn't win, if we had won those rounds, it would be much better for us. The main problem was the start of the half, we started 0-5, and then we did a small comeback.

On the T side we won the pistol round and then we made the call to do the same thing as in the pistol and we just went to A, but they pushed banana and caught Furlan when he was walking up to mid. They killed Furlan and then a domino effect happened, we died one by one and I think that was a crucial round for us in the match.

How much does having GruBy and Furlan, that attended two Majors and qualified for them, although not through the Minor but the Major qualifier, mean for your team?

I think that they are really experienced players, if we have a close result in some matches, they always tell us to not give up, to fight, try to win it anyways. They are really good, I think that both of them are playing better in AGO than in previous teams. For example, GruBy was always entry fragging previously, now he is supporting, and Furlan finally has a team where he can have his role. He can get one, two, three kills and just win us the round because he has a free hand in his decision making.

You are now on one win and one loss and will be playing the BO3 decider a bit later, against GODSENT or Windigo. What do you think is going to happen there?

I think it depends on which maps we will be playing. I don't know what result it will end with, I think it's a 50-50 match if we play GODSENT, but we will do our best. The crucial rounds will be the pistol rounds and the first gun rounds on any map. I think we can make it because we won the first match against them in the group stage and we have the confidence to play against them now.

Do you want to add anything, some thoughts or shoutouts?

Jaroslaw "tgrs" Smietana: We are very excited to play at the Minor, we want to do our best and continue our road towards the top teams in the world and this is just one of the very first steps for us, we have a lot to prove still.

snatchie: In this month we have two more tournaments, China Top in Shenzhen, and WESG in Barcelona. I think those tournaments, even though they are not as important as the Minor from a viewer perspective or the rankings, I think they will be important for us. In China we will be facing teams which are in the lower position of the ranking, we need to prove that we can win this kind of a tournament. At WESG the main goal is to advance to the finals in China.